


The Work Continues

by penumbralsock



Series: Bitter Work [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Corporal Punishment, Dildos, Humiliation Public and Otherwise, M/M, Rape, Sexual Slavery, Slave Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 01:14:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19713319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penumbralsock/pseuds/penumbralsock
Summary: The second and third days of Luke's summer are almost as much fun as the first.





	The Work Continues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nonconamod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonconamod/gifts).



> This is a continuation of a story from last year's collection, [Bitter Work](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15119771). It probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense on its own.

Luke woke slowly to the dazzle of the morning sun through his lashes, warm on the naked skin of his shoulders and arms. He stirred, stretching languidly, but some strangeness tickled the back of his mind. Stretch as he would, he couldn’t reach the edge of his narrow mattress. The sheets were too soft, too white. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he caught the silvery gleam of metal circling his wrist.

Abruptly, Luke knew where he was. He sat up, heart racing, his hand going to his throat. It hadn’t been a nightmare, then. Not a nightmare and not, he could admit to himself, a mistake. He’d spent his first day with Alex half-convinced that it had all been a misunderstanding, that his parents would come and straighten everything out, that they’d rescue him. They’d pull the collar from his neck, the manacles from his ankles and wrists. His dad would hug and fuss over him as his mother demanded to know who would be held accountable for the mix-up, his bother Jaron threatening to go to the Guilds, to the courts, to the constabulary. They’d take Luke home.

A voice from across the room broke his reverie. “Morning, sleepy.”

Alex’s professionally friendly smile woke something poisonous in Luke’s chest. He remembered Alex tying him over the bench, Alex pressing him for answers he didn’t have, Alex’s hand tight around his – Luke pushed the thought away. He remembered Alex’s arms around him, too, Alex’s shoulder beneath his cheek. That was worse. Alex’s cruelty made Luke hate Alex; his kindness made Luke hate himself.

“I was just about to wake you,” Alex said. He gestured to a tray on the table beside him. “Breakfast. You’ve got less than an hour before you’re expected in the gym. We’ll both be in trouble if you’re late.”

Luke went into the bathroom without acknowledging him. The shower was actually kind of amazing, like standing inside a warm, misty waterfall, but it felt strange to wash with the collar and cuffs against his skin. He shaved afterward. It was hardly necessary – as kids, Jaron used to tease him about the functionally invisible dusting of pale hair on his arms and legs – but Luke’s dad said that a man shaved his face, end of story. He bit his lip at the thought.

Luke wrapped himself in a soft, thick towel and went back into the bedroom to find clothes. Realizing he didn’t want to dress himself in front of Alex, he retreated to the bathroom and emerged once again clad in a white uniform identical to the one he’d worn the day before. Luke wondered what had happened to the clothes he’d arrived in. Had the Corporation sent them to his parents? Would his dad wash and fold them, put them away in his closet, leave them to collect dust along with all the other possessions Luke would never see again? Abruptly, Luke was hyperaware of the white fabric against his skin. Would he ever wear anything else?

Breakfast was sweet fruit and a warm, savory pastry Luke had never tried before. Alex was reading something on his tablet, smiling. Did he have parents who would miss him this summer? A girlfriend, or a boyfriend, back at the University? Luke didn’t care. He concentrated on shredding the last pastry into tiny golden flakes.

“Your primary ed tutor loved you,” Alex said. “You drew her schematics for a dirigible made of candy.”

“How do you –” Luke scowled, caught between anger and embarrassment. “You have my school reports?”

“Technically, the Corporation has had guardianship of you since you were born. It’s all in their database. Your reports from school, your medical records. You saw a grief counselor last year when your grandmother passed, and there’s even a transcript of that. You’re a slave, so the privilege doesn’t exist.”

His school marks were one thing. But he’d been a legal adult when he’d talked to Dr. Choudhury. It would have been against the law for her to tell anyone about their meeting, even his parents. If he’d been a citizen, it would have. It occurred to him that she must have known, along with every doctor he’d ever visited. The smiling University agent who’d called Luke to congratulate him and explain the terms of his scholarship. Another betrayal.

Luke decided he didn’t want to talk to Alex about his primary ed tutor and candy dirigibles. “You’re not coming to the gym?”

“I have research to do. Gotta review our objectives, write up a preliminary training plan and discuss it with Williams.”

“Our objectives?” Luke didn’t like the sound of that.

“Oh, you know. Standard behavioral parameters, the kind of minimum specifications any slave should meet. Such as, you know, _not hitting people_.” Alex smacked Luke lightly upside the back of the head. “Smiling in response to positive attention. Submitting to sexual advances. The basics. Once we’ve got you settled into a more pliant frame of mind, we can start shopping you around. When you’ve been matched to a few potential buyers, you’ll get more specialized training to answer their needs.”

Luke addressed the objective he could bring himself to acknowledge out loud. “I’m not going to smile at anybody who wants to own me.”

Alex regarded him gravely for a moment, then shook his head. “Stubborn. Well, it’s early. You’ll have plenty of time to decide how many tears your pride is worth.”

* * *

That cheerful proclamation followed Luke to the gym. He was a little worried about losing his way until accidentally discovering that he couldn’t take a wrong turn if he wanted to. Passing through the door of the training room, he felt the cool ripple of a selectively permeable field, like walking through water without the moisture. To turn down the wrong corridor or to double back on himself was to walk into an invisible wall, soft but unyielding. The building knew where he was supposed to go and that was where he was going.

The gym had several occupants when Luke arrived. A pretty girl in the white uniform of a fellow slave ran around a mezzanine track overhead, braids whipping behind her. The young man Luke had seen with Trainer Williams yesterday followed at a slower pace. A muscular man and woman, also in slave uniforms, circled one another on a mat, trading kicks and jabs almost faster than Luke’s eye could register. He supposed the pair were destined to be bodyguards.

A grizzled woman in a black trainer’s uniform approached Luke at the door and introduced herself, rattling off a long Free Cities name with no vowels that Luke could discern. Trainer Unpronounceable gestured for him to strip – Luke was getting very tired of meeting new people and immediately taking his clothes off in front of them – and gave him a critical once-over. 

“Been in trouble already, I see,” she noted dryly, circling around behind him. Luke flushed. “Well, you’re in sound shape. Swimmer, it says here. Good.” Luke nodded. He’d started back in secondary at his parents’ insistence, and then his scholarship had been contingent on him keeping his place on the University team. He supposed the Corporation wanted its property in good condition.

The woman was now busying herself with a pair of calipers. “Not much to do for now. Buyer wants something extreme, we can always change your regimen later, assuming it’s not surgical.”

“Surgical?”

“No need to worry,” she said. “Most extreme mods don’t take well by your age. They’re usually performed on juveniles, you know, the ones condemned for violent crimes.” Luke suppressed an urge to gag. “I’ll make a note on your diet,” she went on, fiddling with a tablet. “Calorie count, protein and whatnot. Maintain current weight and muscle mass. You can dress.”

She set Luke some stretches and moderate lifting exercises, then showed him the door out to a colonnaded pool, all marble and geometric tile. He exchanged his uniform for a mesh pair of drag shorts – white, naturally – and began swimming laps. The exercise was soothing in its familiarity, even meditative. Luke let go of conscious thought and just focused on his breathing, on the burn of his muscles as he pulled himself through the cool water.

It was in as calm a mood as he was likely to achieve under his present circumstances that Luke returned to his quarters and found Alex gone. He showered and dressed again, picked over the remains of breakfast, and was wondering whether a nap was likely to get him in trouble when a soft footfall heralded an achingly familiar voice.

“Luke?” Jessica asked from the doorway, speaking so quietly it was almost a whisper. She wore the insignia of the Corporation on her shirt, not Behavioral black but the slate blue of Development. She stood absolutely still, holding a tablet in her right hand as though she might drop it at any instant.

Luke didn’t remember crossing the room, but his arms were around her, his face buried in her hair. He clung to the familiar shape of her and breathed in the scent of her perfume.

It took her a long moment to hug him back.

“Jess?” he asked, releasing her. “Are you – how – did Jaron call you? My parents?”

“No,” she said. “No one called. I looked for you yesterday, at orientation. When I couldn’t get through by message, I thought something must be wrong. But not …” her eyes left Luke’s face, lingered on the white uniform, studiously avoided the collar at his throat. “Luke, what happened? Why are you here?” 

And so he told her, from the beginning. Not everything, but how he’d come to the Corporation, how the receptionist had said the word “acquisition” and washed away everything that he thought was solid in his life, like a wave crashing down on a castle of sand. His parents’ lies, their cowardice. His future and his past.

As he spoke, he could see that wave breaking over Jessica as well. Tears welled up in her eyes as she listened, and there was empathy on her face, even love. But there was also a terrible finality to the way she looked into Luke’s eyes as if she were looking at a photograph of something past. Memorizing him.

“So then,” he said, into the thick silence. “If you didn’t know – if, if Jaron didn’t call you …” Luke shook his head, trailing off in confusion. “Jess, why are you here?”

She did not answer, but stared mutely at the floor.

“Jess?”

“I came because someone called Development about the new prototypes, about how they – how they’re not …” She took a deep breath and lifted her eyes to meet Luke’s, squaring her shoulders. “I’m here to recalibrate the neuro-stim function on your collar.”

* * *

After, he crawled to his pallet and lay on his stomach, waiting for the collar to send fire along his nerves and acid through his veins again. There was a bare instant, he’d discovered, when he could feel the galvanic hum of the collar coming to life, a split-second infinity in which to anticipate the pain before it gripped him. He’d begged her to stop, and she’d cried. He’d called her terrible names and she’d welcomed them, apologizing over and over. But she hadn’t stopped, either.

So Luke just lay there after she left. He half-dozed on the pallet until Alex, fucking Alex, came and sat down on the floor beside him. He sat with Luke for a long time, rubbing his back or else running gentle fingers through his hair. At length Luke began to stir. Alex helped him up then and took him outside, walking with him through Behavioral’s cloistered gardens.

They sat down beside a spring-fed pool. Luke kicked his legs lazily through the clear water and began talking over the song of cicadas as afternoon slid into evening. Luke talked and Alex listened. He talked about the University, about his family, about the life the Corporation had stolen from him. Mostly he talked about Jessica. He knew that this was as much interrogation as comfort, that he was handing Alex weapons to use against him in the future. He didn’t care.

Alex mostly left him alone that night. When Luke finally lapsed into silence, Alex went to get food and they shared dinner out in the cloister. Then Alex went away, and Luke sat alone in the cool darkness and watched the stars come out.

He didn’t know how long he sat, but Alex was asleep in bed when he returned to their rooms. That suited Luke fine. He curled up on his pallet and slept.

* * *

Peace didn’t last, of course.

The next day Alex greeted Luke after his morning exercise and lunch by casually reaching over to hook a leash to his collar.

“No fucking way,” Luke said, beating a hasty retreat.

Alex rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t a suggestion, Luke. I’m beginning to think you’re a little unclear on what this whole ‘slave’ thing entails.”

“I’m sorry, did I stutter?” Luke shot back. “I’m pretty sure ‘slave’ is not the same thing as ‘dog,’ and I’m not wearing that thing.”

“I’m aware you’re not a dog, and I promise you that you are wearing it,” Alex informed him. “You can let me put it on you now, or I can go get the paddle. Then you can put it on yourself. Once you’re done blubbering, that is.”

Luke did not feel that blubbering was a fair descriptor of what he’d done when Alex had paddled him, and anyway, he’d been distraught. He’d just opened his mouth to say as much when a commotion started outside the room.

“Sir, this is a restricted area. You can’t be –”

“Take your hands off me, you Corporation bastard! Where is my brother? Luke!”

There was a muffled thud and Jaron thundered into the room, breathing hard. Luke stared at him, speechless, and let himself be pulled into a rough hug.

A moment later, Marco appeared, the beginnings of a bruise reddening one cheek. “Sir, I’m afraid this is your final warning. If you do not – ”

“That won’t be necessary.” Alex’s voice. “Mr. Gardner has come to see his brother. I don’t doubt he will leave under his own power once we’ve satisfied him that Luke is being well cared for.”

Marco looked like he’d like to challenge this decision, but Alex wasn’t paying him the least attention. His eyes were fixed on Luke and Jaron. Marco made a disgruntled noise and stomped out of the room.

Jaron, in his turn, completely ignored Alex. Luke didn’t think his brother had ever hugged him this long or this tightly in his life – nobody was big on physical expressions of affection in their family – but he found he didn’t mind. “Are you okay, kiddo?” Jaron asked into his hair.

That question seemed to open up a chasm of dark possibilities between them. Luke didn’t know how to begin to answer it. His chest felt tight, and something began constricting in his throat. He pulled back, suddenly wanting distance between himself and his brother.

“Luke?” Jaron asked again.

“Did you know?” It came out a croak.

“No. Of course not. I swear, Luke. I didn’t. If I’d known, I’d have – I don’t know. I would have stopped it, somehow. Smuggled you to the Free Cities, maybe.”

Luke just stared at his brother. He wanted so badly to believe him.

Jaron sighed, like he was deflating. “I knew mom and dad were hiding something, that they didn’t want to talk about your citizenship for some reason. And I knew the manumission fees – well, they’re astronomical. I thought maybe they’d done something they didn’t want me to know, something illegal, to buy your freedom. But I never thought – Luke, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t know.”

Luke did. Slowly, he nodded. His breath came more easily now. All his life, he’d felt guilt for the sacrifice his mom and dad had made to keep him free. Like he could never be good enough, not unless he could somehow prove he’d been worth it. All for nothing. They were the ones who weren’t good enough, weren’t even brave enough to tell either of their sons the truth. Luke fought an insane impulse to laugh.

“I’ve talked to a Guild advocate,” Jaron continued. “There’s not a lot that can be done, legally. But Luke, I promise I’ll find something. I can take out a loan, buy you when you come up on contract. You just have to hold on. You’re okay? They’re not hurting you?”

There was that question again. “I’m okay,” Luke told him. He didn’t know if it was true, or quite how he meant it. But he knew he wanted Jaron to hear it.

“Well,” Alex said then, coming up beside Luke and very deliberately hooking the leash onto his collar. “Glad that’s settled, then. It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Jaron, but as I suspect Marco has located my supervisor by now, it’s probably time for you to leave under your own power before you’re escorted out by security. Luke and I were just about to go for a little walk in any case.” Alex gave the leash a sharp little tug, and Luke, caught off balance, stumbled to his side. “Unless you want to join us?”

Jaron was staring at the leash with an expression that could have been anger or guilt or disgust. He took a step back, met Luke’s eyes. “I promise I’ll get you out of here. I promise,” he said again. “Just hold on.”

“I will.”

Jaron stepped forward and caught Luke’s shoulders in both hands. He had to duck under the leash to do it. He kissed Luke’s forehead, said “I promise” one more time, and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. He shot a filthy look at Alex as he ducked under the leash again and left.

Buoyed by Jaron’s assurance, Luke walked placidly beside Alex as they ambled through the cloister. Not even the indignity of the leash wrapped around Alex’s wrist soured his mood.

“He won’t, you know,” Alex said after a minute.

“Won’t what? Who?”

“Your brother. He won’t buy you.” Luke said nothing. “Your family couldn’t afford the fee to keep you free, but they did what they could for you. They got you into good schools so that you could be educated, applied for a deferment so you weren’t taken into slavery when you were sixteen.” 

While lying themselves blue in the face, they had. Parents of the year.

“That means a chance for a domestic placement,” Alex continued, “a chance not to go to the work camps or into a medical testing facility. A very good chance, with a face and a background like yours. But that also means those four extra years, and your education at the University, and the training you’re going to receive here constitute a substantial investment on behalf of the Corporation. How many slaves have you seen since you came here?”

“I don’t know. Twenty, maybe thirty?”

“There are just over fifty acquisitions housed in this facility at present,” Alex said, sounding as usual like he’d swallowed a Corporation brochure. “Most of those will be sold three or four months after arriving. That’s less than two hundred placements a year. The Corporation places ten thousand slaves in the camps annually, and exports maybe five thousand more. This place is worth it to them in part because it produces most of the Corporation’s new tech and personnel, but also because the kind of slaves we train here – slaves who aren’t condemned criminals or malnourished paupers, slaves who’ve been raised free and healthy, who’ve been educated – those slaves are a rare and expensive commodity. The kind of wealth it takes to buy one? Well, it’s an order of magnitude beyond anything your brother is going to be able to borrow or steal.

“Besides,” and now he grinned at Luke, “what a waste it would be.”

Luke mulled that over while they walked. It was awkward with the leash. Too far from Alex and its pull would cause him to stumble; too close and the slack might catch on something and trip him up. He had to be aware of where Alex was at all times, anticipate him when he slowed his pace or turned. 

He hadn’t really expected Jaron could buy him out of slavery, if he was honest with himself. It was enough to know that he wanted to, that his whole family hadn’t been secretly laughing at Luke all his life.

“Did you know?” he asked Alex. “In the coach, I mean.”

“I guessed when you mentioned your brother.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“For one thing, I could have been wrong. But I also thought you might be my assignment. I wanted the chance to talk to you, before … before all this.” Alex gave the leash an almost imperceptible shake. “Besides, you might have panicked, or even run. That wouldn’t have done either of us any good, to have you hauled in by Corporation security or branded as a runaway by the constabulary.”

“Maybe I’d have made it out, gone to the Free Cities.”

“Maybe you’d have flapped your wings and flown across the Summer Sea, too. Corporation security doesn’t lose acquisitions.”

“How did Jaron just walk in here, anyway, if security is so tight?” Luke asked.

“Probably pretended to be a potential buyer, took the tour.” 

“You can just … do that?”

“Sure. Usually they’ll run your credit, make sure you’re serious, but a resourceful guy with your brother’s Guild connections can probably fake that. Well enough to make it through reception, anyway. You see those people over there? They’re checking out the inventory.”

Luke looked where Alex pointed. A man and woman were walking in their direction along the peristyle, flanked by two teenagers and a member of security. Only the guard wore Corporation insignia. Luke didn’t recognize her.

“They bring their kids? Here?” Luke knew that juveniles could actually be condemned to slavery, let alone just see it. It still offended him, somehow.

“Bring them? Sure,” Alex replied. “They’re probably here to buy someone for the girl. Her brother looks young for it.”

Luke gaped at him.

“It’s not unusual among the slave-owning classes, you know,” Alex said. “The thought is that a kid reaches a certain age and experimentation is bound to happen. The reasoning goes that it’s safer for that to happen with a slave. Better not to worry about sex and romance at the same time, you know? Let alone disease or pregnancy.”

“That’s crazy,” Luke said. His cousin Cecily was about the same age as the girl on the peristyle. He tried to imagine what his aunt and uncle would say to the suggestion that they should procure a dude for their daughter to _experiment_ with. It was almost enough to make him laugh.

“It’s practical,” Alex said, shrugging.

“It’s revolting. They’re buying their daughter a person for a sex toy. Haven’t these imbeciles ever heard of a vibrator?”

Very unfortunately, the twin distractions of managing the leash and denouncing the excesses of the rich had impaired Luke’s awareness of the rest of his surroundings. He’d also raised his voice more than a few decibels on that last question.

The visiting family and their escort were now staring at him from less than a dozen paces away, their expressions ranging from affront to amusement. All but the boy, who seemed absorbed in playing a game on his pocket tablet.

“You never learn, do you?” Alex muttered under his breath, then raised his voice to address the visitors. “My apologies, sir; my apologies, ma’am. Young mistress and young master. Luke here is a recent acquisition, and he’s still adjusting to the protocol of his new situation.”

“He should be beaten,” the woman said crossly. Her son glanced up from his game, a flicker of interest on his face.

“Certainly, ma’am,” Alex agreed quickly. He took a firm grip on the leash just below Luke’s collar and hauled him over to a nearby plinth. “Give me a hand?” he asked the guard, who was producing a handled leather strap from a holster at her belt.

And so it was that for the second time in three days Luke found himself bent over an object, face down and ass up, waiting to be beaten for some nonsense offense. This time with an audience. Craning his head around, he watched the guard offer Alex the strap – it looked heavy and thick – and position herself alongside the plinth. Luke gave a surprised grunt as she pinned both his hands behind his back and pressed down hard, momentarily driving the breath from his lungs.

“You aren’t going to flog him?” the boy asked Alex, now definitely intrigued by the proceedings.

“Nobody flogs a pleasure slave, dummy,” his sister told him. “A flogging leaves scars.” A pause. “He’s too pretty to scar.”

“Your sister is correct that we don’t use the lash here,” Alex said over the boy’s snort of derision, “but I think we can get our point across just fine without it.”

Luke felt hands at his waist and would have jumped if not for the guard pinning him down. “Seriously?” he said, squirming a little as his shorts were peeled down to his knees. He heard giggling behind him. “Right here in the middle of the fucking yard?”

Apparently, yes. His answer came in the form of the sharp crack of the strap across the backs of his upper thighs. He gritted his teeth as the next three blows marched upward, awakening a stinging heat that he knew from wretched experience would grow into something completely unbearable as Alex caught his stride.

Or maybe not. Luke braced himself for a fourth blow, but it didn’t come. 

“Sir? Ma’am?” Twist as he might, Luke couldn’t see around the guard to check what was happening behind him. He caught what could have been a soft demurral, followed by –

“Can I try?” The boy’s tenor voice. Oh, fuck no.

A short, surprised silence lasted the space of two heartbeats. Not that Luke’s was pounding or anything.

“Of course.” Alex said after a breath. “Be my guest.” He sounded like he was just on the edge of laughter.

“Alex,” Luke grated. “Don’t.”

“There, you see? Luke doesn’t mind. Here, stand a little off to the left. No, like this. He likes to kick, sometimes. There you go.”

The strap came down again, dead center, then twice and again in the same spot. The boy didn’t swing the strap as hard as Alex could, but he swung it more than hard enough. Luke couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Quite the follow-through you’ve got there,” Alex said. “Crossminton?”

“Thunderball,” the girl answered for her brother in the martyred tone of a compulsory attendee at matches. “Constantly.”

Luke had wanted to play Thunderball. He remembered envying the other kids, how they laughed in delight as they flew lightning-quick above the field, sonic racquets volleying the ball almost too fast to see. He’d been bitter when his parents insisted on swimming. He’d found it dull, his times good but unexceptional. Then his scholarship had come through, and he’d guessed they’d known what they were about after all. Not that he’d guessed half of what they’d really known.

Luke had to admit that this boy was probably an excellent Thunderball striker. He was determined not to humiliate himself further by reacting to the steady fall of the strap, but the kid obviously knew what he was doing. He seemed to find the most sensitive spots and linger over them, delivering one blow on top of another before finally moving on to new territory.

“My dad lets me punish our household slaves sometimes,” the boy said proudly, delivering a particularly vicious cut to the lower curve of Luke’s ass. “The maids, a couple of times, and I beat the chef’s boy once when cook was away and dinner came out cold. He’s nineteen, and he cried,” the little sadist said proudly. “He’s even taller than this boy – Luke, was it? – but kind of scrawny.” He grunted as he brought the strap down again. “I think, _oof_ ,” another heavy swing, and now the kid was breathing hard, “I definitely think he’s feeling it, though.”

Luke definitely was. He remembered Alex using the word “blubbering,” though, and no way in hell was he going to break down over a strapping from this zit-faced adolescent twerp. Alex was in front of him now, having circled the plinth to look down into Luke’s face with an overly amused quirk to his mouth. So Luke pressed his lips tightly together and fixed his eyes on the ground, waiting the kid’s strength out.

It wasn’t an equal contest, though, leather against flesh. The kid eventually stopped bragging, probably to save his breath, and the strap just kept falling and falling. Its bite against the crease of Luke’s thigh finally brought a yelp – _not_ a sob – slipping out from behind his clenched teeth, and the kid gave an excited whoop as if he’d just scored a winning goal. 

“Okay, tiger, that’s enough.” That sounded like the father. “Let’s take it as written that this young man has learned his lesson when it comes to guarding his tongue in front of his betters –” Alex made a faintly skeptical sound that only Luke was close enough to hear “– and go see about finding your sister a birthday present.”

“Can’t I have this one, dad?” asked the girl. She now stood beside Alex at the front of plinth and was scrutinizing Luke’s face. The security guard had made no move to let him up yet. “He’s so handsome, and he has spirit. Mom, what do you say?”

“How many slaves are there in the building? Because we're going to be here for an awfully long time if you're going to fall in love with all of them,” her brother interjected, as Alex attempted to explain that Luke wasn't properly trained yet and therefore couldn't be sold.

“I don’t think so, dear," said the older woman, with a quelling look at her son. “Come along.”

“Bye, Luke,” the girl said, and blushed as she reached down to pet his hair. “Be good.”

* * *

“I still can’t believe you let him do that.” The words sounded stupid as soon as Luke heard himself say them out loud. What in his experience of the past three days had given him reason to suspect Alex of any kind of solicitude for his dignity?

They’d joined the other trainers and their charges for dinner out at a table in the gardens for the first time. The girl who sat across from Luke had snickered when Alex had had to forbid him from eating his meal standing up.

“All in the spirit of pleasing the customer,” Alex said as he led Luke back into the training room. “You’d have preferred the collar? Didn’t think so. To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t like that thing, either. Good thing we’ve got all these paddles, right?” 

Recognizing bait when he heard it, Luke changed the subject. “So could I end up sold to a girl like that one? After I’m … trained?” The word made him want to hit something.

“Probably not a girl, given your history,” Alex said thoughtfully. “Parents usually want slaves of an incompatible sexual preference for that kind of thing. It’s a delicate job, and it’s usually thought that the right slave is one who will submit to what’s demanded of him – or demanded of her – and no more. Where there’s the potential for reciprocal attraction, there’s always the chance for things to escalate more quickly than they would on their own.” Alex unclipped the leash from Luke’s collar and hung it up by the door. “You’d be a fine choice for the right boy, though, if his taste ran your way. You could help with schoolwork and even athletics as well as providing a sexual outlet.”

Luke gave a theatrical shudder, thinking of the boy from that morning. Alex laughed, clearly following his train of thought. “Don’t worry about the kid you met earlier. Give him a year or two and he’ll be way less interested in whipping your ass than in … other things.” A thought seemed to come to him and he grinned. “Or maybe not. There are always outliers, of course.”

“So what if –”

“Speaking of those other things,” Alex cut him off, “I let you mope around yesterday because you had a rough morning, but tonight you’re back to earning your keep. Take off your clothes and hop up on there.” Alex motioned to a padded table as he started toward the wall of doom and its collection of horrifying implements. 

“Sure,” Luke said sarcastically. “Or wait, here’s a thought, what if I –”

Luke got no more warning than he had received on his first night. The bands around his ankles and wrists hummed to life. Between one breath and the next, he felt himself hauled into midair, limbs stretched taut just short of pain.

Alex came to stand in front of him. “Why is it never, ever enough to give you an order once, Luke? What do I have to do to you in order to make you take this seriously?”

Luke dubiously eyed the thick, phallus-shaped rod in Alex’s hand. “Believe me, dude, I could not possibly take that thing any more seriously than I already do.”

 _Pain_. Luke yelled, twisting vainly against the invisible force holding his body in the air. As abruptly as it had come, it vanished. He hung panting, stared at Alex.

“I told you I don’t like doing that,” Alex said quietly, “but I will if you force me to.”

He stepped so close that Luke could feel heat building between their bodies, almost touching. Alex slid his hands under the hem of Luke’s shirt, grazing his ribs, the straining muscles of his upstretched arms. He tossed Luke’s shirt aside, leaned forward against his naked chest.

“This isn’t meant to be torture, you know,” Alex murmured into his ear. “I’m trying to teach you that it can be easy to submit.” Alex’s hands were at Luke’s hips now, fingers slipping beneath the waistband of his shorts. “Perhaps, in time, it can even be pleasant.” He slid Luke’s shorts down with agonizing slowness. His fingers left trails of fire across raw skin. The shorts joined Luke’s shirt on the floor. “But the very first lesson, the one you seem incapable of learning, is that You. Do. Not. Say. No.” Alex bit off the words as if he could etch them individually into Luke’s consciousness.

Luke expected Alex to release him then, but he didn’t. He fiddled with the tablet instead, and Luke felt himself pulled across the room to alight on the padded table Alex had indicated before, lying on his back. His wrists were drawn up to rest against the table above his head and fixed in place. His ankles, humiliatingly, rose up into the air and drew apart, forcibly spreading his legs and raising his ass as if inviting Alex to do his worst. Luke didn’t want to think about what his worst might be.

Alex had the bottle of viscous liquid again. He set down the phallus – it was ribbed along its dark length, now Luke saw it up close – and began to slick up the fingers of one hand.

“Wait,” Luke begged, panic settling like a weight on his chest. “Can’t you just jerk me off again, like you did the first night?” But Alex was shaking his head before Luke finished getting the words out. “Or – or I could suck you off.”

Alex actually laughed at that suggestion. “Because your track record here definitely gives me confidence you’re not going to lose your head and bite me. No. I’m not putting my dick anywhere near your teeth, no offense.”

 _No offense_. Like, Alex was sorry for not raping him orally as well as anally. Too bad for Luke that his ass hadn’t come equipped with a set of teeth. He fought down an impulse to giggle hysterically.

“Besides,” Alex said, “there’s been too much negotiation between us. This is happening, Luke. Right now. You can accept it or you can fight it, but it’s not going to make an inch of difference either way.”

Alex leaned over him, pressed his right palm to Luke’s chest, resting his weight against him. Bright green eyes bored into Luke’s as slick fingers pressed into him slowly, gently. Luke shivered, spasming slightly beneath Alex’s hand, _around_ Alex’s hand. The fingers inside of him twisted, scissoring, and he gasped. They curled upward, and Luke felt heat pool beneath his belly. The thumb of Alex’s right hand stroked Luke’s breast, glided over his nipple, raising gooseflesh.

Then the fingers inside him were gone and Alex had the phallus in his hand, oiling it up. Luke’s breath came faster, his eyes widened. He could feel it against him now. It was too big. He felt an invasive pressure and clenched every muscle in his body. Alex ran a hand down the inside of his thigh, caressed the curve of his ass. The pressure eased off and then returned, hard.

Luke cried out as he felt something give way, felt the phallus push into him, slowly, so slowly. It hurt. Alex leaned forward between Luke’s parted legs, all but lying on top of him. For a moment Luke thought Alex might kiss him, but he only stayed there, face inches from Luke’s own, breath tickling Luke’s cheek. The pain receded by increments and at length the phallus began to move more easily inside of him, forward and back. He groaned, flexing his limbs against the invisible restraints.

Luke was surprised to feel himself half-hard when Alex’s free hand closed around his dick, stroking in rhythmic counterpoint to the movement inside of him. Alex’s face was flushed, his eyes wide, as Luke writhed beneath him, tensing and twisting against friction within and without.

Luke didn’t know how long they went on that way. Minutes, surely, but they felt like hours. In the end he came, shuddering, into Alex’s fist and went limp, heart hammering, his entire body drenched in sweat. The force binding his wrists and ankles released him. Luke closed his eyes and lay still for a long time.

Later, Luke emerged from the shower to find Alex already asleep in bed, moonlight from the window frosting his dark hair. It occurred to him, suddenly, that he could kill the other man now, wrap his hands around that tan throat and squeeze until he went still. All he had to do was want to.

Luke lay down on his pallet and waited for sleep.


End file.
